JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Kanto region
- RCS (RCSコーポレーション), Kanto
- Salary: ¥180,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month includes performance bonus
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- Assistant Language Teacher - TOKYO - late-March start
- Interac, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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- Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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jeancolmar
If I were to meet Obama I'd ask him, "What's a nice guy like you doing in a rotten system like this?" Obama is no doubt sincere in making the super-rich pay their fair share of taxes. But because he is aiming at the most powerful of the dry rot that controls the US he is going to get a minor concession on this.
You heard it from me first: Obama is the American Gorbarchev. The system Obama is trying to reform a system as rigid and lethal as the one Gorbachev had to deal with.
Posted in: Obama announces plan to close U.S. tax loopholes
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jeancolmar
May Day has fired nothing but apathy in Japan, unless something is not being reported.
Posted in: Recession fires May Day rallies worldwide
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jeancolmar
The person who is being intimidated is Professor Robinson. This is a simply and awful fact of American life: You criticize Israel in the US at your peril. What the professor is saying is essentially right: Gaza is like the Warsaw Ghetto. At this point the Israelis are not seeking a systematic Final Solution to the Palestinian problem, but then neither did the Nazis at first. A better parallel is South African apartheid or the US vicious policies toward Native Americans. But the hideousness of what Israel did in Gaza, as the world stood silence, is damnable in itself without comparisons.
This is only one reason Professor Robinson is in trouble. He dared criticize Israel.
Posted in: U.S. professor's Holocaust-Gaza comparison stirs debate
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jeancolmar
I am for Roxana. I doubt she is a spy. Iran should free her as a good will gesture.
Posted in: U.S. journalist jailed in Iran goes on hunger strike
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jeancolmar
Acually, Helter_Skelter, you need to know more. For instance, how do you explain to rise of neo-Nazism in Russia when over 20 million Russians were killed by the Nazis? Islam is eclectic in honoring Jewish prophets and Jesus. Christian bigotry against the Jews has been around for centuries. And then there is the vast ignorance of the true scope of the Holocaust. I might add that most critics of Israel, which includes Jews in and out of Israel, are not Holocaust deniers. And one last question: How many Holocaust deniers are there and what is their geographical distribution?
Posted in: Obama vows to fight Holocaust deniers
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jeancolmar
Unfortunately, much of Eastern Europe, particularly Russia, is like the redneck deep south. There are good reasons for the Czechs to be worried about the poisonous influence of people like David Duke.
It is hard to say what influence the various KKK groups now have in the US. One thing is certain. The KKK (or KKKs) did not wither away in the 1920s. Klansmen were responsible for considerable violence during the civil rights struggles in the 1960s.
Duke seems to have funding from somewhere in order to travel to the Czech Republic.
Duke is dangerous enough in the US but he is particularly dangerous in Eastern Europe. The fall of Communism has left both an economic and ideological hole in many East European countries. Unfortunately, that hole is being filled by fascists for many disillusioned youths. It is worst in Russia where crimes against non-whites, particularly blacks, are rampant by neo-Nazis.
Posted in: Ex-Louisiana KKK chief David Duke arrested in Prague
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jeancolmar
There is no denying the Holocaust. It is a horror that only becomes more horrible the more you know about it--and I do not mean just the "details." It is going to haunt this world for centuries in one way or another. There will always be the Holocaust deniers and Obama was right to denounce them. It is also an easy thing to do, speaking as one who has done it and will do it again if necessary. It is harder to condemn Israel's crimes against humanity, like Gaza, or Turkey's denial of its Armenian Holocaust. (Who gives a hoot about the Armenians? said Hitler, or words to that effect in German.) Or for that matter, in is hard to rub Japan's nose in its war crimes. It is likewise, hard for an American president to condemn the crimes of his own country.
The Holocaust is here to stay in people's memories. But there is a bit of a denier almost everyone. There are victims whose existences are cheerfully forgotten when the Holocaust is discussed. Try this out. How many people did the Holocaust kill? Six million is the standard answer, which Bob Dylan even put into a song. Wrong answer. Around six million Jews were murdered but the death toll stands at around 11 million. If you insist on six million you are a Holocaust denier. If you somehow insist that the Holocaust was exclusively a Jewish tragedy you are Holocaust denier. (And of course you are a complete idiot to deny the Holocaust simply because you are mad at Israel.) As I mentioned before, the Gypsies lost a larger percentage of their population than the Jews, but who really cares about the Gypsies, right? There were others: Leftists, pacifists, Slavs, the physically and mentally handicapped (called "useless eaters"), homosexuals, and others who I cannot name at the moment. This isn't a matter of "details." It is a matter of seeing not only the full scope of the horror but also confronting your own prejudices. The typical Holocaust denier is invariably anti-semitic. But there are the partial deniers. How do you feel about the gay and lesbian victims? What about the Roma victims? How about the Russian victims? Yes, how about the Russian victims especially, since Russians have been hated in one way or another to the present.
"President Barack Obama paid tribute Thursday to the memory of Jews murdered in the Holocaust and said it is the duty of the living all over the world to end such atrocities forever," we are told in the beginning of this article. The man really needs a history lesson, so the next time he speaks of the Holocaust he honors the memories of all its victims. He ought to spend some time in the Holocaust Museum which has, to its credit, made an effort to document ALL the victims of the Holocaust.
By the way, one source I've read, Wikipedia I believe, says that some black people died in the Holocaust? Does anyone have any information on this?
To conclude: Honor all victims of genocide or mass murder that approaches genocide without exception. It is no guarantee that history won't repeat itself, but at least it will serve notice to potential mass murderers that their victims will not be forgotten like the Armenians in Hitler's mind.
Posted in: Obama vows to fight Holocaust deniers
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jeancolmar
There is still a civil war on between Sunis and Shi'its. It is all part of the mess that Bush made. It won't go away just because Obama is president.
Posted in: Suicide bombers kill 60 at Baghdad shrine
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jeancolmar
Welcome to the new euphemism: "Harsh Interrogations." It torture. And people who commit torture belong in prison.
Oh yes, torture is responsible for a lot of false confessions.
Posted in: Report links CIA to military harsh interrogations
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jeancolmar
Whether torture works or doesn't work is irrelevant. Torture is immoral. It is immoral even dressed in its current euphemism, "harsh interrogation." It is immoral: period. Torture can never be tolerated or forgiven, no matter who does it. I hope the Bush torturers get prison, including Bush and Chaney.
Posted in: Unresolved debate: Does torture work?
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jeancolmar
The walkout and the clown noses are as silly as anything Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have said. Ironically, Palestinians and Jews are both Semites, which means they belong to the same gene pool. The difference is that the Palestinians are poor and neglected by North American and Europeans nations while Israel is a poster child that can get away with anything. The facts of Israel as a military, theocratic and ethnocentric murderous monster are under your nose. If you hate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his idiotic remarks about the Holocaust, then you should hate Israel for what it did in Gaza and for its illegal settlements, among many other outrages.
Posted in: Iran leader's comments on Israel spark Western walkout at U.N. meeting
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jeancolmar
Let me make a broad generalization. Marx is wrong when times are good and right when times bad. Marx himself was not concerned with either good or bad times by themselves but with the way capitalism would create its own demise.
In bad times the demise of capitalism seems closer at hand. People are scared and look for alternatives. I do understand in the sudden interest in Marx. Marx makes sense especially at a time like this. But interest in the Communist Party? That is a surprise. I know it's been a Euro-style Communist Party for years. But still, there is something fuddyduddy and old maidish about Communist Parties. It's the best alternative around for now for those people looking for an alternative.
The CPJ is a reformist party. They are social democrats, not revolutionaries. Outside of fighting for justice within the capitalist system they have no clear vision of an alternative to capitalism.
To take a line from Lenin, the CPJ just might discover that the masses are more revolutionary than they.
Posted in: Communist party surges as Japan's economy withers
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jeancolmar
Unfortunately, this further discredits the US. Consistently the US will not go near this conference because the embarrassing problem of Israel's apartheid state is going to come up. It would put the US in the position of defending it when it is in fact indefensible.
The more I watch Obama the more I see him as the American Gorbachov. He is for openness and extending his hand everywhere but there are fundamental rotten things in his system he will not touch, one of them being the so-called special relationship with Israel, which has helped turn that place into a monster.
Posted in: U.S. to boycott United Nations racism meeting
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jeancolmar
Whether or not obesity is a disease is how you define the term. Hippocrates saw it as a disease: "Corpulence is not only a disease itself, but the harbinger of others." WHO calls it a world-wide epidemic. If it is not a disease it is a "medical condition." Recent studies, which you can Google, link poverty and obesity in developed countries. Poor people buy cheap food and that has a tendency increase among them. The degree obese people are able to stop being obese through free will is a matter of good luck and genes as it is effort. When obesity starts in childhood the child has little free will in deciding what he or she eats and has less of a chance in not becoming obese in later life.
The problem with the airlines is that they ignored the problem of obesity. Charging obese people double is making them pay for the airlines' poor planning,
Posted in: United Airlines to charge obese passengers double on full flights
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jeancolmar
I expect that UA is going to be challenged in the courts over this and they might have to back down, given the number of obese people in the United States.
Contrary to what you think, obesity is not simply the result of over-indulgence and lack of exercise. If it were, curing it would be simple and no one would have to be overweight. It is not simple. Witness UA's overweight flight attendants for example.
An obese friend of mine died recently. This person spent a lifetime trying earnestly to lose weight--losing the equivalent of "one whole person" at one point--and still remained obese. Besides the physical stress this person suffered there was also the mental stress of being ridiculed by heartless people.
Obesity is very much a lower income disease as it comes from eating cheap starchy food. Obese people also tend to not get the high paid jobs. Forcing them to pay double is one more act of cruelty that they have to face. UA and other airlines ought to be required to have limited handicapped seating, which would include seating for the morbidly obese.
UA, I might add, has horridly cramped seating that is a pain even for those of who are not obese.
Posted in: United Airlines to charge obese passengers double on full flights
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jeancolmar
These people ought to be prosecuted. What is Obama afraid of?
Posted in: No charges against CIA officials for waterboarding
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jeancolmar
It is interesting what comes out when there is a change in administration. The right-wing threat is not new and not sudden. It was ignored by the Bush administration, which was itself a right-wing extremist cabal.
The worst terrorist attack in the US prior to 9-11 was Oklahoma City, carried out by right-wing extremists. These people carried out in practice what had been table talk for years.
The extreme right-wing web in the US is wide and diverse. It includes various white racists, the right-to-lifers, survivalists, NRA gun nuts and people like Ann Coulter. The US is a dangerous place politically.
Barack Obama is best thing to happen to the US in years (in spite of his faults) and I truly fear for his safety.
Posted in: U.S. is ripe for recruiting by extremists, report warns
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jeancolmar
The Taliban murder lovers. The US drops missiles on innocent civilians. It would be nice if there was an alternative to the Taiban but at present there isn't.
Moderator: Stay on topic please. Your reference to the U.S. dropping missiles is not relevant.
Posted in: Afghan Taliban publicly execute man, woman for eloping
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jeancolmar
This truly monumental. When is the movie?
Posted in: 'Sakura Police' make their 1st arrest over student assault
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jeancolmar
I have horror stories about United Airlines, which I am forced to take if I need to get to North America. Their ground staff is worse than their flight attendants, except in Japan.
U.S. Immigration runs the gambit from mildly annoying to obscene. They want to presume you are going to love the US so much that you are going to turn into an instant illegal alien, tossing your more or less comfortable life for substandard wages and no health benefits and the chance that some psycho mass murderer will blow you away.
Posted in: Passengers see improvements in U.S. airline services